escimo wrote:Seems to work, some kind of ... with demo transparency_ovl the X Server crashed after loading the two OpenLook windows.

The demo (transparency_ovl) is working in general, but always if I want to take a screenshot the X Server will fail and terminate. Nevertheless there isn't much acceleration with my x86 box: no dedicated dev pipeline (dynamically-loadable shared object module) for the built-in graphics chip (CL GD-5428, 1MB DRAM). Simply the systen does not fit for this purpose w/ this configuration:

Soon try some of the XGL samples, running on my SS2 with GS graphics under Solaris 2.4.

BTW: PCD-4H using now a ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (Mach32) ISA board wit 2 MiB VRAM for higher resolution (1280*1024px @ 8bpp) in conjunction with 19" LCD for crispy clear fonts, ok better than before, because scaling could not be switched off with resolution less than the native one.

After installation of all tools and utilities, including header files I managed to compile all XGL and XIL demos.The output of the XGL demo "inq" wasn't what I expected: still many lines with "emulated in software"

Maybe some other application blocking or occupying the overlay map? - I have no idea.

Some of the demos are much faster, e.g. in rotation/transformation, compared to the x86 box w/o special XGL device pipeline but higher (internal 66MHz) clockrates. Also the sundiag test cases for the CG12 are much faster in displaying the results compared to the SPARCstation 1+ (Sun-4/65).

Contacted Mr Deering.From his point of view or what he remembered the GS aka cgtwelve aka CG12 was NEVER EVER a product developed by Sun but rather by Matrox. Sun contributed only two ASICs (EIC External SBus Interface Ctrl and another on the upper framebuffer PCB as well as drivers and implementation for graphics API's like Pixrect, XGL and PHIGS+.

I strongely believe the GS was from an architectural point the direct predecessor for the later improved and highly integrated MGA (Matrox Graphics Architecture). This and the version for EISA bus, the MG-3D, in theory also usable in an Indigo 2 workstation with dedicated Matrox X11 servers, later succeding into products like the Matrox Impression and Ultima up to Millennium series. In fact the price/perf ratio was not so bad for price sensitive workstation users. You can find some Matrox chipset specification (e.g. ATLAS) with matching characteristics in WWW. Just take a look.

Because i didn't find more in-depth documentation dedicated to the GS I use some "source trees" from WWW to get a closer look in the acceleration methods. And no, it's not the NetBSD source tree because there is no acceleration for the GS available there ... until now. maybe never

He's got a list of the graphics projects he's worked on, pretty impressive

Indeed, really impressive!

escimo wrote:(...) This and the version for EISA bus, the MG-3D, in theory also usable in an Indigo 2 workstation with dedicated Matrox X11 servers,(...)

typo: board set with name designation MG-3D Ultra was for EISA, without "Ultra" for 16-bit ISA.

Finally got a used version of the book "State of the Art in Computer Graphics" to get more in general information about architecture.The smal block stating the GS has a classic graphics pipeline ("inverted funnel' structure)Figure somewhat complemented with ASIC abbreviations from my sample board set.